Business Cocktail

Sutro Biopharma nets $85.4M to drive antibody-drug conjugates

Sutro Biopharma reeled in an $85.4 million series E that will advance some early-stage programs as well as its cancer pipeline, which includes a pair of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).Of its ADC assets, STRO-001 is in phase 1 for lymphoma and multiple myeloma, and STR-002 is slated to enter the clinic for ovarian and endometrial cancer by early 2019..The financing comes five years after the Bay Area biotech’s $26 million series D round and brings its total raised to more than $175 million. A few ADCs are already on the market—including Roche’s HER2-targeting breast cancer drug Kadcyla and Spectrum Pharma’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma drug Zevalin—and a number of them are in development.In April, Swiss biotech ADC Therapeutics ditched a candidate for HER2-positive breast cancers due to toxicity issues in a phase 1 trial. AbbVie ended an early-stage trial for its ADC designed for solid tumors.

After its recent funding round, HiFiBiO pens Takeda R&D collaboration

HiFiBiO Therapeutics has signed a deal with Takeda, to work on antibody therapies for various gastrointestinal diseases, cancers and other disorders.HiFiBiO, which works on antibodies through single-B-cell screening and analysis, will receive upfront, R&D, milestone and royalty payments based on antibodies delivered to Takeda for development and sales, but both are keeping tight-lipped on just how much that’s all worth. In May, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company got off a $37.5 million series B round, coming off a 2017 management shuffle, which saw the biotech hire a new president and CEO in Liang Schweizer, Ph.D., who previously held management roles in cancer research at Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb.